The Pricker Boy Page 5

  I drop the bucket and step down the path, away from the orange flames. Boris wobbles to his feet and follows me.

  The cooler air feels good on my cheeks. I look up for the stars, but tall clouds swell in the sky, crackling with energy. I breathe. I just breathe. I stand there for a second, or maybe it’s a minute, or it could be five. I honestly don’t know.

  The next thing I hear is Robin calling out for me. The rain starts pouring down on top of us, making my bucket of water pretty redundant. I run back up the path with Boris. Vivek is standing there in the rain, as white as a sheet and still holding the stone in his hand. Huge drops of water splash into the fire, causing it to squeal. The fire pit hisses like the open mouth of a dragon, spitting clouds of steam.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “Guys, there’s something up there. Something on the rock in the center of the Hawthorns,” Vivek says.

  I hope he’s joking, but he looks terrified.

  “I saw something there, and I reached out to touch it just to make sure. Then I turned right around.” He drops the stone by the edge of the fire pit.

  “What was it?” Robin asks.

  “It felt like a dead animal. Like a rat or something.”

  “A dead rat?” I ask with a nervous laugh.

  “I didn’t pick it up and look at it!” he shouts at me over the thunder. “But that’s what it felt like. A dead animal, all wrapped up in rope or something. That’s the only way I know to describe it.”

  Lightning flashes across the sky. We all look at each other, trying to figure out what to do next. Part of me thinks we shouldn’t go look until morning, but another part knows that it simply will not wait. Besides, if we all stick together, we’ll be fine. We’ll be terrified, but we’ll be fine. The thorns only claim people when they’re alone.

  “I want to see it,” I say. “I’ll go if we all go together.”

  “To the Hawthorns?” Ronnie screams. “At night? But it’s raining! My grandpa will want me to come home—”

  “Don’t be such a baby, Ronnie!”

  He surrenders. “Okay, I’ll go. If everyone else goes.”

  Everyone moves except Robin. “You’re not serious!” she says.

  “How else are we going to know what it is?” Emily says.

  “I don’t want to know!” Robin says. “This is scaring me. Seriously!”

  “Be scared then, but you’re coming anyway,” Emily says, grabbing her hand and pulling her along with us.

  I lead the way, taking a few quick steps up the path. I stop, and Ronnie bumps into me from behind.

  Lightning flashes again, illuminating the trees and the rocks all slick with wetness. Behind the Widow’s Stone, his gray skin shiny and darkened by the rain, I can see the Pricker Boy waiting. I slip and fall to the ground. My friends immediately reach down to help me to my feet. I brush off my hands on my jeans as quickly as I can, the earth feeling leprous on my palms.

  The lightning flickers again. This time, the apparition is gone.

  “You okay?” Ronnie asks.

  I don’t answer him. I turn around and put my arms out, sweeping my friends back down the way we came. I move them all quickly past Whale’s Jaw, past the dying fire, past where Pete and I built that old fort, past the twin climbing trees and all the way out into the road, all the while carrying the feeling that something is watching from behind.

  “The morning,” I say once we get back to the road. “The morning will be soon enough.”

  We split off then. Vivek and Emily walk home together. Robin and I deliver Ronnie to his screaming grandparents before going back to our own house. Even after we get inside, I can feel that thing, feel it reappearing at the Widow’s Stone and watching us on the path. I can feel it there, though I can’t be sure myself of what I’ve actually seen.

  When I open my eyes, all I see are thorns, millions of their branches twisting away in the darkness. The leaves are dripping, and the lightning is still flashing nearby. Everything is slick—slick from the rain. It takes me a moment to realize that I am standing next to the Widow’s Stone, on the exact spot I saw the Pricker Boy standing earlier this evening. I can feel the mud beneath my bare feet. My heels are sinking into it, and I can feel worms, tiny worms crawling in between my toes. I jump away and bolt down the path toward Whale’s Jaw. Before I get two yards, I slip in the mud and fall to the ground.

  I feel him before I see him. I don’t even have to turn around to know he’s there. I try to get up, but the mud is greasy, and my hands and feet keep slipping. I turn to look at him. He is standing at the break in the wall, staring down at me. Every wet thorn on his skin gleams. He doesn’t make a move toward me. The wind dies away. I struggle to my feet.

  He nods at me, and my fear fades away. He has no plans to hurt me. His lips aren’t moving, and he isn’t talking, but I know he wants something. He’ll leave me alone if I will only bring the others, Ronnie and Emily and Robin and Vivek. I nod. I don’t know why. I can’t explain my actions. I just nod.

  His eyes twinkle. He wants one more. He wants the Cricket. I shake my head and stumble away. I slip once again down into the mud. I scream at him, but no sound comes out of my mouth. I try to stand, but I fall in the mud, sliding down toward Whale’s Jaw. I can hear the Pricker Boy on the path behind me, sure-footed, the thorns of his feet acting as cleats in the mud. For every yard I can struggle along, he moves three. I am almost to Whale’s Jaw when his hand grips my ankle. I feel the prickers on his palm sink into my skin. He drags me up the hill, past the Widow’s Stone and down the path into the thorns.

  The woods around me come alive. Something is wriggling around my legs. My skin is tearing. Branches from the pricker bushes are reaching out and wrapping themselves around me, securing me to the ground. Beneath me, the earth breaks open, and I fall into a narrow, muddy crack. The thornbushes pull me down deeper. Above me, I see the Pricker Boy’s body change. His torso remains the same, but his lower body elongates like a centipede’s. Dozens of orange legs extend out of him. The legs circle the rim of the hole and start kicking dirt on top of me. He begins screaming, screaming and giggling at the same time. Mud fills my mouth, closes off my ears. He turns to look at me, and just before my eyes are buried I see his face, all gray and covered with thorns. Two pincers suddenly jut out of his cheeks. He laughs. His legs scrape at the ground and cover me over.

  I open my eyes again, but this time it’s to morning sun. I’m lying in Nana’s garden. I hear a voice say, “Good morning.”

  I struggle against the sleep, but I can’t answer, can’t even move, can’t react to a voice that could belong to anybody. My eyelids slowly close again. I know that I’m really awake, but the dream is still there. It still feels real in my half-awake brain. I force my eyes open again, and through their fog I see the leaves of Nana’s artemis plant. I have a vague memory of Ronnie and me as little kids helping her weed the garden. She used to talk to the artemis when she pruned it, calling it her ‘Old Uncle Henry’ and telling it about the dreams she’d had the night before.

  “Are you all right?” the voice asks.

  I draw three deep breaths. “Bad dreams,” I croak.

  Emily sits cross-legged right next to me. “Sleepwalking and nightmares? What do you have against a good night’s rest?”

  I feel black dirt stuck to the side of my face. I try to wipe it off, but it smears on my hand. Boris flaps his tail and proceeds to lick my face clean. “What time is it?” I ask. Boris and I had bunked next to Nana’s lilac bush, a relatively harmless spot, considering where I just dreamed I’d been.

  “A little after dawn,” Emily says. “Have you ever watched someone’s eyes flickering when they dream?”

  “If you knew I was having a nightmare, why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “I did,” she says. She’s still wearing her pajamas, but hers aren’t covered with dirt. I’m a mess of twigs and leaves. I blink at her. Seeing the face of a friend calms me, makes the dream unravel and float
away much quicker. I run my hand through my hair to try to achieve some kind of composure, but it only elicits a wince and a shake of the head from Emily. She reaches over and plucks pieces of Old Uncle Henry from my hair. The affection surprises me, but as she squints at the leaves, I realize that she just wants to examine them more closely. “I didn’t sleep much either,” she tells me. “Not that I was really afraid, though. The night seemed restless. It felt like I had to stay awake for my family’s sake, because they were all sleeping and needed someone to listen for them. Then the sun came up, and everything just melted. Everything was okay again. It does seem silly now, doesn’t it, now that the daylight is back?”

  I shrug.

  “Strange how the mind works in the dark. We should pay attention tonight, just as dusk comes, to see how our perceptions change.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “Maybe Vivek didn’t see anything at all,” she adds, “but there’s only one way to find out, and I’m interested.”

  “Only one way to find out,” I say, and stand up. “Just give me a minute to get changed.”

  “Changed?” She looks down at her own pajamas. “Do I look changed?” She grabs my arm and pulls me up the driveway, calling Boris along behind her.

  The woods are still soaking wet, and Whale’s Jaw smells of damp moss and leaves. Boris pauses at the base of the rock and looks at me dumbly.

  “Go on, old boy, go get it,” I order him. He whimpers, flaps his tail in the dirt, but does not move. “Chicken.”

  “We’ll go together,” Emily says. She takes Boris by the collar and gives a little tug, and the dog reluctantly follows along with us.

  The Cricket and I are down by the water. He’s searching for crayfish. He turns over one rock after another, reaching down and plucking the shellfish out of the water before they can scoot away. For fifteen minutes I can see Ronnie watching us from his bedroom window. The Cricket has three crayfish in his bucket by the time Ronnie leaves his grandparents’ air-conditioned tomb and makes his way down to the water. The purr of Morangie gives him away again as he tries to sneak up on us.

  “I saw you and Emily this morning.” He smirks. The cat jumps around his feet, rubbing her face against his leg.

  “Really, Ronnie?” I say. “Well, aren’t you clever?”

  “I wasn’t spying,” he says, almost apologetically.

  “No, you just like to stand at your window and stare at people for hours on end.”

  “If my grandparents were up, I would’ve asked to go outside!” he protests.

  “You’re a creep, Ronnie. Deal with it.”

  He hesitates a minute, pokes his nose into the bucket to count the crayfish. Morangie meows, hoping to catch his attention. “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So you found it. What was it?”

  Poor Ronnie. He always loves to have the secrets, but it causes him such pain to have one kept from him.

  “Noon today, we all meet at Whale’s Jaw. I’ll bring the package. But I’m not talking about it until all of us are together.”

  “Just tell me,” he says, almost pleading.

  “When we’re all together. The package is a message, and it’s a message for all of us. We’ll look at it together, and we’ll talk about what to do about it together.” Ronnie stands there for a minute before turning around and heading back toward his cottage. Morangie runs after him. Ronnie will try Emily next, but she won’t tell. I try to ignore the fact that it feels good to torture Ronnie like this.

  Robin is the last to arrive, and I think that Ronnie and Vivek are about ready to kill her by the time she shows up. It’s nice to see someone else irritated by my goody-goody cousin for once.

  “So what is it?” Ronnie asks when she finally gets here.

  “Emily and I got up early this morning—” I start.

  “Just tell us!” Ronnie blurts.

  “Listen to Ronnie getting all forceful here!” Vivek says. “It was all a joke, Ronnie! We were putting you on! There was nothing up there!”

  From the hurt look on Ronnie’s face I can see that he believes Vivek, and why shouldn’t he? It wouldn’t be the first time we teamed up to make Ronnie look like a fool.

  I open my bag and reach down inside. The thing has dried some since the morning, but it’s still slippery to the touch, and the feel of it makes me want to gag. “After Emily and I looked at it, I wrapped the package back up exactly as we found it. I wanted you guys to see exactly what we saw,” I explain.

  I take the package out of my knapsack and place it on the back of Whale’s Jaw. It’s some kind of animal skins sewn together, rolled into a bundle, and wrapped up tightly with string. Vivek winces when he sees it up close.

  “It stinks,” Ronnie says, pulling his face back.

  “Wet fur usually does. I think it’s rabbit fur, but I’m not sure,” Emily says.

  Ronnie steps forward again and looks at it closely. “Yeah, I think you’re right,” he declares.

  I loosen the string, and the package falls open. Everyone else just stares, not quite believing what they see. “Oh my God,” Robin whispers.

  A number of objects fall out of the bundle. They are wet from the rain but otherwise in very good shape. Very good shape indeed, considering that some of them have spent years out in the woods.

  “That’s my book,” Ronnie says, picking it up. “That’s my H. P. Lovecraft book. I gave that up years ago.”

  Vivek reaches over and picks something off the pile. “These are my old baseball cards,” he marvels. “These are the ones that we used …” He looks at me.

  I smile. “When you were having trouble in math. I used the players’ stats to teach you percentages.”

  “It worked too.”

  Robin reaches in next, selecting a flattened roll of papers secured with a rubber band. “It can’t be,” she says. “Oh, Ronnie, look at this!” she squeals. “Look!” She unrolls the paper. “These are the comics we made when we were little. Remember? You wrote the stories, and I drew the pictures!” Ronnie looks over her shoulder at them and smiles.

  “This one’s my locket,” Emily says. She picks it up and wipes it on her shirt.

  “But all these things were lost, right?” Vivek asks. “Didn’t we lose all these things?”

  “We didn’t exactly lose them,” Emily says. “We gave them up doing widow’s walks.”

  Robin remembers and immediately drops her hand-drawn comics on the rabbit skin. “All of these things were left on widow’s walks?” she asks, her voice shaking a little.

  The widow’s walk was a kids’ game from years ago. The rules were simple. There were certain bad omens in the woods. One was accidentally cutting yourself and drawing blood. Another was throwing up. Or seeing a salamander with red spots. Or if you were “it” more than five times in one game. If anything like that happened to you while you were out in the woods, it meant that the Pricker Boy was watching you, that he had your scent. The only way to ward him off was to do a widow’s walk.

  You took something of value, walked past the Widow’s Stone and onto the path through the thorns, and placed that thing on a large stone that sits in the middle of the Hawthorns. The others, the watchers—at least one—stood at the Widow’s Stone and waited for you. As terrifying as the walk was, you knew that the Pricker Boy couldn’t get you so long as you had your friends with you. Of course, you also had to trust that your watchers wouldn’t run away and leave you out there alone by the Hawthorns. Over the years we had given up all kinds of objects: packs of gum, toy surprises from cereal boxes, handfuls of firecrackers, scratch-and-sniff stickers, plastic army guys. Each one of them was an offering to the Pricker Boy. I will give up this special thing if you will only forget about me. Usually the rest of the group decided what would be left in the Hawthorns.

  “Ronnie Milkes, you have to go back to the Hawthorns and leave seven jawbreakers and a pinch of your grandfather’s pipe tobacco.”

  “I can�
�t steal my grandpa’s pipe tobacco!”

  “If you don’t, the Pricker Boy will get you.”

  “The widow’s walk,” Vivek says. “It was a good thrill. You know, when we were ten.”

  Ronnie shakes his head and steps back. He looks up into the woods beyond Whale’s Jaw. “This isn’t so. This can’t be so.” He turns and looks directly at me. “This can’t be so. You know, Stucks? This can’t be.” He places his book on the rabbit skin and steps away as if it’s diseased.

  “Oh come on, Ronnie,” Emily says. “The book is still yours. It belongs to you.” To prove her point, she fixes her locket around her neck. “See? I’m still alive here.”

  Ronnie looks at her and shakes his head. “This is wrong.” He stares at the locket as if he desperately wants Emily to take it off and place it on the rabbit skin.

  I reach into the pile and pull out a pocketknife.

  “That’s Pete’s knife,” Ronnie says, turning his face away. Vivek pulls the knife from my hands and examines it closely. The words PETE MORGAN are carved into the plastic on the side. Pete carved them using my pocketknife, as I had marked the side of my own with the very knife that Vivek now holds in his hands.

  “So let me get this straight,” Vivek says. “When we were kids, we used to leave things on the offering stone in the Hawthorns so that the Pricker Boy would leave us alone, and now that we’re getting way too old for that, he’s started leaving stuff for us?” He waits for a response, but no one jumps in. “Maybe he wants to play hide-and-seek with us! Or ring-around-the-rosy? Remember ring-around-the-rosy?”

  “You were scared last night,” Emily says. “If we’re too old for this, then what were you afraid of?”

  I look Vivek straight in the eye. “We might be too old for stories, but this package is here. Someone or something left it for us to find.”

  Ronnie picks his book back up again. He looks the binding over, checks the pages. Apart from the rain of last night, there doesn’t appear to be any damage to it at all. He opens the book and begins flipping through the pages. He shakes his head back and forth, still not believing what he is seeing.